


Howard's Captain Hotline

by Fanhag102



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, I have headcanons, Pre SteveTony, This is supposed to be entirely movie-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-04
Packaged: 2017-11-13 13:45:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/504144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fanhag102/pseuds/Fanhag102
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Okay, so I strongly believe Steve and Tony met before Avengers. But how did Tony find out Steve had been found? </p><p>So last night I thought, "what if Howard had a Cap hotline?" and then this happened. It's supposed to be entirely movie-canon based. I might write another one about Steve and Tony's first meeting because i've been meaning to for a while, but idk. </p><p>(This also includes some of my Coulson headcanons)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Howard's Captain Hotline

It started at about 4 in the morning. Pepper had gotten Tony to go to sleep early, miraculously (it probably had something to do with the fact that there was now a Pepper-shaped pillow for Tony to come to bed to), and he hadn't woken up when the ringing began. Pepper, on the other hand, had.

"Tony, Tony," she poked and prodded him sleepily until he grunted to show he was awake. "There's something ringing, a phone or something." 

Once he was awake it was sort of hard to ignore. It was coming from somewhere down the hall and echoed through the whole mansion; incessant, loud, and obnoxious. 

They were at the Stark Mansion, Tony's "childhood home." At least, the home he sometimes came back to during breaks from school. It had never really felt like home, no matter how Jarvis tried to fix it up for the holidays. 

Pepper had wanted to come to New York early even though the Tower wasn't finished yet. Tony had offered to let her stay in the hotel he'd been in while overseeing the Tower's construction but she'd said she wanted something homier than a hotel and mentioned the Stark Mansion. Why she thought the mansion was homier than a hotel Tony will never know. Tony will also never know how she managed to convince _him_ to stay there as well (he thought it had something to do with the way her lips curved into a smile when she kissed him), but she had, and it had tured out like this--woken up at 4 in the morning by some mysterious ringing.

Whether it was Pepper's nagging or the ringing itself that finally made Tony heave himself out of bed and trudge down the hall was another mystery--apparently this evening was full of them. 

He didn't know who would even call this number! No one had lived in the mansion in years. Tony'd had to hire a specialized crew of cleaners to come fix it up before he and Pepper temporarily moved in. They had requested he pay them extra after they were finished, claiming that their lifespans were severly shortened from inhaling so much dust. 

Tony still remembered where the landline was, despite how many years it'd been since he'd seen it in use. He could still remember his mother sitting at the desk, gabbing away on it, gossiping to the other high-brow ladies about what so-and-so had worn to the art opening last week. One of Maria's few joys in life. 

It was a little difficult to find in the dark but somehow Tony managed, nearly breaking his toe on the old chair because he hadn't bothered to turn on the light. 

"God dammit," he cursed, leg flailing in the darkness as he reached for the phone. He could at least get the ringing to stop and maybe go back to sleep more a few more blessed hours. He picked up the anchient reciever (really, who used landlines anymore?) and held it up to his ear, toe throbbing painfully.

"What the hell do you want?" he asked gruffly, voice still hoarse from sleep.

There was no reply, and after a long 30 seconds Tony realized that the ringing was still very much there and most definitely not coming from the phone currectly in his hand. 

Tony was a little more awake now. Awake enough to listen more closely to the ringing and notice that it was coming from much further down the hall. If he had taken the time to install JARVIS into the mansion he would just get the AI to find the ringing machine and make it stop, but the Stark Mansion would always belong to the original Jarvis and installing a copy in the house seemed unkind to butler Jarvis's memory. Annoyed and sleepy, Tony Stark made his way down the darkened hallway, following the sound of the ringing until he found himself standing in front of the closed door that led into his father's workshop. 

_Great_ , he thought. _Like this night could get any more annoying._ With an unspoken curse towards his father's name he opened the door to the workshop and stepped inside. The lights came on instantly, much to Tony's surprise. Automatic lighting like that should have been before his father's time but apparently his old man had figured it out before the rest of the world could manage it. 

Tony forgot about it the second he spotted the other landline sitting on a cluttered desk on the far side of the room. It was too damn early for this and that ringing was getting more grating by the second. He marched over to the phone and just as he was about to pick it up and give whoever the hell was on the other line the sleepiest tirade in history he realized that, once again, this was not the source of the mysterious ringing. He frowned, glancing around the room. Tony was amost fully awake at this point and he knew the ringing was close by; it had gotten much louder since he entered the workshop. He tried to pinpoint the source and noticed suddenly that one of the drawers of his father's desk was rattling just barely. Curious--but still tired and grumpy--Tony opened the drawer.

Well, he attempted to, but found out rather quickly that the drawer was locked. Tony, who was not an overly patient man, was nearing the end of what little patience he did have. Luckily (for the drawer), he spotted a key sitting in plain sight on the corner of the desk. It slid easily into the keyhole and turned easier still; he felt a click and pop of the drawer coming unlocked and pulled it opened wearily. 

Inside the drawer he finally discovered the true source of the ringing. There was a wireless phone; old, beige, army-grade, and with only one square button near the center. It looked like it had never been used. Tony had never seen anything like it before and he would probably want to study it later when it wasn't making that god-awful ringing noise. Almost hesitantly, because this whole situation was just plain weird, Tony pressed the one button and held the device up to his ear.

"Hello?" he asked, most of his earlier annoyance replaced with burning curiosity. 

"I have a message for Howard Stark," a voice replied instantly. 

Tony frowned. This was all very weird. Like, really fucking weird. A phone with only one button, locked away in his father's workdesk suddenly starts ringing and the voice on the other end says he has a message for the very dead Howard Stark. An oddly _familiar voice_...

"Uh, sorry," Tony replied, the strangeness of the entire thing throwing him off the smallest bit. "He's pretty, uh... dead." 

"That is of no consequence," the voice answered in clipped tones. "I was instructed to call this number and relay this message if a certain event were to ever occur. At 4:03 AM this morning the event occured, so I am calling to relay the message to whoever has answered the reciever." 

An event? Message? Seriously, this voice was annoyingly familiar. Dry and plain, a little boring and unemotional--Tony couldn't place it if his life depended on it. 

"Okay... so what's this message then?" Tony asked, not enirely sure he wanted to know the answer although every bone in his body was telling him he needed to hear it. 

"Captain America is alive. He was discovered, frozen, along with the wreckage of a large war-plane at 4:03 AM this morning somewhere near the Arctic circle. That is the entirety of the message. My mission is now complete. Have a good day, Mr. Stark."

With that, the line went dead. There was no busy-tone or static; it seemed as if the device itself had ceased to function. 

"Who was it, Tony? Are you coming back to bed?" Pepper called sleepily from down the hall. 

No. No, Tony didn't think he was coming back to bed anytime soon. His heart was racing and he was wide awake. He looked at the device in his hand, suddenly sure of it's purpose. His father had created a device that's only function was to let him know if Captain America was ever discovered, and from what the voice just said, the device had finally fullfilled it's role. 

And that voice... Why was it so familiar? Tony still wasn't sure, but it didn't really matter. Nothing mattered in that moment; not the voice, not the device, not his father, not even Pepper. None of that mattered, because _Captain America was alive!_

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn't figure it out, that was Coulson on the phone. 
> 
> I have a headcanon that Coulson's father worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. too, and had been in contact with Howard Stark and also part of Howard's search for Steve. Howard had to give up the search at some point, but he wanted to be the first to know if Cap was ever discovered, so he built the hotline and entrusted the number to Coulson's father who then entrusted it to his son when he died, along with a lot of fantastic stories about Steve and Captain America. When Fury told Coulson that Cap had been discovered, he knew that he would finally be able to call that number and fulfill the task passed down to him by his father.


End file.
